Madoka Magica

While Madoka Magica is a very enjoyable show, like Angel Beats… it kinds of lacks a bit in Character Development, don’t you think? In Mystlord’s Madoka post, he mentions something important with the Character Development of Madoka:

In particular, the characters seem to be… errr… strange. The only one who has had a logical development up until this point is Mami, and she’s, well… You know. But the characters in Madoka Magica seem to flip flop between these sort of different personality states, like they’re bipolar.

Considering the length of the series (12 episodes), it seems that Urobuchi is feeling the pressure that Jun Maeda was facing when he has to limit the character development to a few characters. While Madoka Magica does not have nearly as much characters compared to the latter, the characters personality I feel are not as established was they are supposed to that it causes inconsistency. This is apparent with Kyoko when she is axe-crazy to very sympathetic and kind. It also applies to Hitomi where she suddenly reveals that she has a huge crush on Kyousuke… Where in the earlier episodes where she does something that suggest that she likes him? Stuff like these makes the character development feel wishy-washy with no clear direction. Then again, the manga will probably won’t have this limitation since it allows more freedom.